


Winter Dark

by lucifel



Series: Band of Brother's: Drabbling Through The War [2]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Drabble, Friendship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-28
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in Bastogne, there are moments worth remembering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post from 2007.
> 
> Based on the HBO mini-series. No disrespect meant to the original people on whom these characters are based.

1\. Skin

He hovers at the lip of his foxhole with a bowie knife in hand, fingers shaking inside of makeshift gloves. He blows a reluctant breath out from protesting lungs while staring glumly at an impossible thing.

There isn’t a drop of blood on the snow.

Blindly, he pulls the knife free of the corpse, handing it over to the man crouched beside him. Rising, he shuts his eyes and banishes the brief hope he’d held for a warm meal.

“Sorry Dick,” he mutters blithely, “what you need here’s a Harvard man. Nobody at Yale taught me how to skin a frozen rabbit.”

2\. Fire

When Dick Winters was sixteen he had once made the mistake of walking through Boston after a snowstorm minus his hat. As he’d passed under a window sill on Beacon Street there’d been the screech of a cat and a thunk from above. Immediately thereafter, a substantially sized pile of snow had migrated from the sill to the crown of his head.

The present moment resembled that one most closely.

“Malarkey,” Dick asked with deadly quiet, “what _precisely_ is the meaning of this?”

The soldier, possibly drunk and quite probably abashed, had the good grace to blush and stand to attention.

“Sorry sir,” he said with a grin, “but Captain Nixon thought your head was on fire - he ordered me to put it out.”

3\. Hope

 _Once upon a time_ –

“Well wait, that isn’t right –.”

 _\- there was a man named Epimetheus_

“No. That isn’t **right**! You don’t start -.”

 _Great Zeus gifted Epimetheus with a beautiful wife -_

“ – it’s NOT a fairytale!”

 _Named Pandora._

“Oh great.”

 _Remember Pandora Nix?_

“Of course I - .”

 _Because I’m just saying._

“Shut up.”

 _Well you can’t just –._

“I’m leaving.”

Dropping Dick’s letters, Nix closes the foot locker and walks away.

Those letters aren’t his to read.

They’re addressed to some girl in Pennsylvania.

4\. Metal

Eugene Roe is cleaning out a wound on Captain Winter’s jaw, pretending all the while that his supplies extend beyond soap and a bit of melted snow. The “wound” (if it can be called such,) is really just a deep scratch sustained while shaving with cold stiff hands and it doesn’t, in all honesty, warrant the attention of a medic.

Thing is, any excuse to look after Major Winters, (and surreptitiously check his over all health,) is one that Eugene will take.

He sort of has too.

Because Winters is all the company's got these days.

Raw Iron for witches.

Cold Silver for werewolves.

Richard Winters to ward off the god damned Nazis.

Sort of.

 

5\. Home

Snuggled with Lew Nixon at the bottom of a foxhole is the stiff, sleepy figure of Dick Winters. (Identifiable as such by little more than the drippy red nose sticking out from between green lumps of standard issue army wear.) Dick is used to this.

As a child during the depression Dick spent entire winters huddled with his siblings like a litter of puppies. There is, however, one rather major difference.

“Nix?” He begins hesitantly.

"Yeah?”

“Do me a favor and go sleep over at CP tonight? You smell like the floor of a bar room.”

Nix smacks him.

That’s familiar too.


End file.
